Move over Amazon, Apple considering Northern Virginia campus

Apple may be closing in on a location for a new campus it announced earlier this year - and it could end up being located close to Duke University, where CEO Tim Cook and several other top Apple executives went to school.

Apple's search for a new campus location is being conducted in secret.

On Wednesday, Raleigh's WRAL news outlet cited sources as saying that the Apple campus is a "done deal" and that the only hurdle left is for the North Carolina Statehouse to pass a package of tax incentives to score the $1.5 billion investment from Apple.

Part of Apple's investment in the United StatesTim Cook supposedly met with North Carolina's governor over the weekend to discuss the project, having already been in the area to deliver a commencement speech at Duke University.

North Carolina's head state senator, Phil Berger, declined to comment through a representative, citing a "longstanding policy that we do not comment on economic development prospects".

Amazon may be garnering numerous headlines, as the Seattle-based e-commerce and tech giant continues the process of picking a location for its second corporate headquarters, which has been dubbed HQ2. The new campuses will not be anything like the previous ones.

"We're not doing a beauty contest kind of thing", Cook said in a recent interview.

Apple And Amazon In Northern Virginia?

Apple, too, is on the hunt for a new campus that will employ thousands of workers. Officials from the state reportedly pitched locations in Arlington, Fairfax, and Loudoun counties to Apple people. The current proposal calls for a bare minimum of 3,000 new jobs at the new Apple facility, with an expansion to between 5,000 to 10,000 jobs once the project is fully complete.